Pivoting Once More: Next Stage Theatre Festival Goes Online
Looking for a reason to stay indoors as Toronto experiences record-breaking snowfall? You’re in luck: Toronto Fringe’s beloved Next Stage Theatre Festival will be presented online beginning this Wednesday, January 19.
Due to continuing complications with the Omicron coronavirus variant, the previously-planned hybrid festival has once again gone 100% virtual, offering audiences scores of digital content including dance, musical theatre, gaming, stand-up, and more. The festival is proceeding almost entirely as planned in terms of programming: only one show has been lost to complications surrounding the digital pivot.
Executive Director, Lucy Eveleigh, said in a press release that “the artists have stepped into this realm with a wonderful enthusiasm, and we are so grateful that we still get to share the world of all these incredible companies and present [this] slate…of productions.”
This year’s Next Stage shows feature a wide and curious range of genres and themes, from TYA to satire to tragedy to comedy. Even from their couches (or beds, or desk chairs), audiences will be pleased by these invigorating mid-winter offerings from Next Stage.
The team at Next Stage has programmed a multidisciplinary, diverse festival featuring performances from It’s Not a Pivot Productions (The Complex), Nowadays Theatre Company (Heart of a Dog), Gamiotics Studios (Saving Wonderland), HomeMadeIt Productions (She’s Not Special), Comedy Records (stand-up comedy), Nautanki Bazaar (Stories of a Dish), Vivian Chong (The Sunglasses Monologue), PointeTango (Tango in the Dark), and Ursa Productions (Ursa: A Folk Musical).
You can find out more about these productions, including complete synopses and credits, here.
Next Stage is also offering several free ancillary events for community members, including How to Craft a Career in the Arts and No Pressure Networking for emerging artists.
Tickets to Next Stage performances are $15 and are available here.
Aisling Murphy
Aisling is Intermission's senior editor and an award-winning arts journalist with bylines including the Toronto Star, Globe & Mail, CBC Arts, CTV News Toronto, and Maclean's. She likes British playwright Sarah Kane, most songs by Taylor Swift, and her cats, Fig and June. She was a 2024 fellow at the National Critics Institute in Waterford, CT.
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